


Nimble and Bright

by BlueColoredDreams



Series: Quantum Entanglement [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Maureen the Shitty Robot Queen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: Moments in Lucretia and Maureen's relationship.





	1. A Gentle Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maureen knows when to intervene when the stress is too much for Lucretia to work through, no matter her protests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to TAZ Rare Pair week, where I use the prompts as an excuse to write maurcretia.   
> All of these, unless posted separately, are part of Quantum Entanglement, because I'm... stupid attached to it, like, ridiculously attached.
> 
> Title from [She Shines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGTkAVsrfg8) by Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett!

Lucretia presses her fingers to her temples, pressing against the pounding behind her eyes. She rubs up to her hairline and presses her head into her fingertips, resisting the urge to card her hand through her close-cropped curls and tug. Maybe it would relieve some of the throbbing, briefly. 

Three meetings, a debriefing, several maintenance reports of faulty air-locks and bad locking mechanisms, so many bad roommate assignments, so many (she’ll have to discuss the algorithm with Lucas for a  _ third _ time), a failed mission, and a death. She has two more private meetings, then a campus-wide announcement, a meeting with Leon and then with Brad, and then the task of reassignments before she can even begin to think about turning in for the day—but even that is futile, there’s so much to do. So many dead ends to chase until another night is spent sleepless. 

It’s only the second week the Bureau has been operating in earnest, on its newly built moon-facade campus. 

And… 

Her staff is singing again. 

It hums and trills and sings to her; it sounds like pianos and violins and the way Fisher keens now in their big tank alone. Sometimes, it’s just a wordless vocalization; others, long-forgotten hymnals from worlds long abandoned. Sometimes, it’s quiet. Today, it’s chatty. 

It sings and chirrups like a pet would, interest peaking as people shuffle in and out of her office. It thrums when she’s alone. She could still it with a touch—take it in hand and lock it away, but the noise would penetrate her ears, her skull, it would be  _ within  _ her then. 

The mere thought makes her head pound. Her eyes feel swollen, like they aren’t sitting right in the sockets, and her mouth is dry. She knows she should stop for a moment, take the time to eat and drink and take a potion to stave off her migraine, but there’s too much to do to even pause. 

Atop everything else, they’ve caught wind of something promising—a mine in Phandalin with a legend of inconceivable power attached to it. What’s more, her seekers are bringing back reports of mercenaries that match the last known accounts of her old friends. Things are starting to pull together, finally, after years and years of fruitless searching. This is no time to stop. Every second she spends out of her office is a second wasted, a second where her friends could slip away, where the Relics could move along to a different hand. Lives wasted. 

She lifts her hands and pinches the skin between her thumb and forefinger tightly, exhaling through her nose as she tries to will the pain away. She pushes harder as her headache fails to ease, then brings her hands to the base of her neck. She presses her thumbs to the underside of her scalp, gritting her teeth. 

“Too low, the pressure point is higher.” 

Lucretia turns her head towards the false door behind the bookshelf. She shifts her hands up. “Here?” 

“Let me,” Maureen says, dusting her hands off on her pants as the bookshelf clicks shut. “You never get the angle right on yourself.” 

Lucretia tips her head forward obediently, sighing as Maureen touches the back of her neck with gentle fingers. 

“I can see the tension in those shoulders,” she chides.  “I came because I made you some more oil for your hands, but it looks like my other services are needed.” 

“Did you? I didn’t say I was running out,” Lucretia murmurs. Maureen laughs and touches behind her ears with something cool and slightly slick. The scent of oranges, something spicy, and vanilla follows the touch. 

“I knew you were bound to soon, it’s winter,” Maureen answers. “Besides, this is neroli oil instead of plain orange blossom—it’s good for tension and insomnia. It took me a bit to get my hands on some; I’ve been wanting to try it for you for a bit.”  

Maureen pushes her thumbs to either side of Lucretia’s spine. “Drop your head slowly,” she murmurs. “Okay, lean back.” 

Lucretia sighs again, a soft sound as Maureen’s thumbs press deeper against her muscles. She holds her breath as Maureen slowly traces her thumbs towards the inside of her ears. 

Maureen brushes her knuckles against Lucretia’s jaw, and then touches the nape of her neck. “We need to give you another shave,” she says idly, toying with the soft baby-fuzz of curls. 

Lucretia groans at the idea of having to hold her head ramrod still as Maureen cleans up the severe line of her cropped curls. Usually, the task is an intimate one—something she looks forward to in the strange sort of way she does when she thinks about chores and errands with her wife. But now, it just makes her head throb more, the firm line that Maureen had massaged still sore, like her fingers were still pressed into her skin. 

Maureen shifts and sits on the edge of Lucretia’s desk, feet scuffing the ground as she kicks them idly. “Not helping?” she asks. 

Lucretia notices the downward modulation of her tone, and can only give a soft whine when Maureen reaches up and cups her palm over her eyes. Her touch is cool—thank gods for Maureen’s always cold hands, honestly— and the dark it brings is welcome. 

“Lucretia,” Maureen murmurs. 

Without guidance, Lucretia drops her head to Maureen’s lap, eyes closed tight as the world sways around her with the sudden movement. 

“Oh, honey,” Maureen breathes. She pulls Lucretia’s glasses from her face and tucks them in her jacket pocket. She rolls her fingers into the muscles of Lucretia’s neck, feeling the tension there. “You’re done for today.” 

“One of our Seekers died. Brian’s throwing fits, he’s likely to defect next,” Lucretia says against Maureen’s leg. The admission throbs in her chest with her head. “I have to do damage control. Brief the whole Bureau.” 

“You’ll do more damage like this,” Maureen says slowly. “Sit up, hon. It’s time to turn in.” 

“But,” Lucretia protests. 

Maureen gently nudges her chin with her knuckles. “Up. Don’t make me mom voice you.” 

“Too late,” Lucretia murmurs, feeling too weary to even laugh. 

Maureen slides off the desk and grabs Lucretia’s quill. She dips the pen in the well and scrawls out a message in large block letters that are too blurry for Lucretia to make out without her glasses. “There we go,” Maureen says, blowing on the parchment. “Sit back and I’ll pop this on your door right quick.” 

Lucretia closes her eyes and covers her face with her hands. Her staff trills in time with the pulse in her veins. It delights in the presence of another person, growing in pitch and volume. 

“Maureen,” she whispers. She sounds pitiful even to her own ears. “I need to at least…” 

“I know,” Maureen murmurs. “I can hear it, too.” 

Lucretia looks up, startled—the movement is too fast and pain radiates down her spine as dizziness rocks her nearly out of her chair. Maureen darts forwards and grabs her forearms, steadying her. “You never told me you could hear it,” she breathes. “No one should, I, the spell—”

“A different problem for a different day,” Maureen soothes, gently lifting Lucretia to her feet. “Right now you look like you’re going to pass out or barf—or both. Preferably neither.” 

Maureen wraps her arm around Lucretia’s shoulders, under her arms in case she stumbles. She holds out her other and Lucretia takes it, blinking rapidly. 

“Hey, close your eyes, it’s okay,” Maureen says. “I’ve got you. C’mon, you’ve got a good nap time potion and a massage incoming.” 

“I have so much to do,” Lucretia whispers, but closes her eyes as Maureen leads her back behind the portrait door and down her hall. She hears the indistinct hum of magic, countered by a murmured spell from Maureen. “Staff, _ the staff _ —”

“Floatin’ in a bubble behind us. I won’t touch it, and I don’t want you to either. That thing’s worse than Lucas.” 

Lucretia laughs and immediately regrets it. “Oh, don’t make me laugh, Mar.” 

Maureen squeezes her hand softly. “Almost there,” Maureen promises. She lets go of Lucretia’s hand to press it to the disguised panel in the wall, opening up their private quarters. “Here we go, sit, I’ll grab you something comfy.” 

“My robes are comfortable,” Lucretia complains, squinting as she shuffles her way over to the bed. It’s freshly made—certainly not how she’d expected to find it, since she’d left before Maureen had even woken—there are new sheets and a fresh down comforter tucked neatly at the corners, too neatly for Lucretia bothering to turn down. She sits on the bed and puts her head in her hands. 

“Pajamas are comfier,” Maureen replies, riffling around in the closet. “Here, I’ll let you borrow one of my nightshirts, this one is clean enough.” 

She strides over and starts undoing the catch at the hollow of Lucretia’s throat. Maureen deftly undoes each frog and fastening, slowly pushing the fabric off of Lucretia’s shoulders and down her torso with a gentleness that feels reverent. 

Maureen kneels and lets Lucretia brace against her shoulders as she stands to let her robes and slip fall from where they’re bunched at her hip. Maureen remains kneeling when Lucretia sits back down, breath uneven as she presses her hands to the mattress. 

Lucretia digs her fingers into the comforter, trying to keep herself upright as the room spins. She feels Maureen’s breath on her knees, her hands steady down her calves. Maureen gently turns down her socks, then wiggles her shoes off slowly. 

She pinches the pad of Lucretia’s toe and holds it for ten seconds, then drags her thumbs to the base of her toe. 

“I’m going to get you some medicine and a cloth, will you be okay for a few seconds?” she asks, pressing her thumbs between the tendons of Lucretia’s second and third toe on each foot. 

Lucretia makes a quiet noise of ascent, reaching out for Maureen’s nightshirt as Maureen stands. Maureen kisses her forehead softly, then gestures behind her, the Bulwark Staff floating in a shimmering ball of light. “Gonna lock your chatty friend up, too.” 

“Okay,” Lucretia whispers. She eases the nightshirt over her head and curls up slowly. She buries her face against the pillows and closes her eyes. She can’t do anything but focus on the pain beating at the base of her skull. 

“You don’t want under?” Maureen asks sometime later, Lucretia lost the meaning of time at least a hundred-hundred heartbeats ago.  

Lucretia resists the urge to shake her head. “No, you made the bed up. ‘S nice.” 

“Made it for sleepin’,” Maureen soothes, “Sit up a little now.” 

Lucretia sits slowly and lets Maureen spoon the syrupy potion she keeps for these occasions into her mouth. Maureen strokes her brow as exhaustion rises up to snatch her. 

She’s not sure what she’d do without her, honestly. 

“Oh, just run yourself into the ground.” 

Lucretia murmurs in the back of her throat, and Maureen guides her onto her back, cool fingers replaced by an almost-icy rag. “Wake me in an hour?” 

“Don’t fight it, dear,” Maureen whispers, picking Lucretia’s hand up and pressing it to her lips. “Let the potion do its job.” 

“Boo.” 

Maureen laughs, running her thumb against Lucretia’s knuckles. Lucretia hears her voice, but the words are lost as the potion sucks her into blissful silence and dark. 

When she wakes, the room is lit only by the glow from the planet outside of the picture windows, the hazy blue-pink aurora lit brilliant by a setting sun. If she squints-- which she does-- she catches the shining glint of the floating laboratory over the Stillwater Sea. A brief hook sets in her gut; she wants to be there, at home, in her and Maureen’s haphazardly messy bedroom, nestled under the weight of laundry and books and the bed they’d slept on for eight years now. 

She sits up and feels a rag slide from her forehead, tepidly damp. It lands in her lap and her head gives a fuzzy sort of protest, migraine dulled to a low ache by rest and potion. 

She blinks slowly, the lurching feeling in her stomach tightening to another sort of ache, the one that travels up to her throat. 

“Mar?” she whispers. She sets the rag aside and goes to push aside the blankets. She rolls over and swings her feet over the side of the bed, only to recoil as she touches something warm. 

She leans over the side of the bed and finds Maureen asleep on the rug by the bed, glasses askew and mouth open atop a fan of paperwork. 

Lucretia lays herself out on the edge of the bed, fingers skimming Maureen’s shoulder. 

“Mar.” 

She gently shakes Maureen with the flat of her palm. Maureen rolls to the side and begins to snore. Lucretia laughs and drops her foot down from the edge of the bed, nudging Maureen in the stomach. “Maureen. Maureen, you’re drooling on my paperwork,” she whispers, tapping her toes against Maureen. 

Maureen reaches out and grabs Lucretia’s ankle. “Who dares wake me?” 

“Me,” Lucretia says petulantly, trying to tug her foot back. 

Maureen turns her head away and taps her fingers against Lucretia’s ankle. “I don’t know any  _ me’s, _ ” she muses. “I think I’ll sleep.” 

“Maureen!” 

“And roll all over these papers,” Maureen finishes, cracking one eye open. 

Lucretia presses her heel to Maureen’s sternum. “No, don’t you dare. I need those.” 

Maureen laughs and sits up, patting Lucretia on the knee. She lays her head against the edge of the bed and yawns, pressing her nose to Lucretia’s thigh. “Feeling better?” 

Lucretia smoothes Maureen’s hair. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you, I don’t know how you knew I wasn’t feeling well.” 

Maureen slings an arm around Lucretia’s hip, shrugging. “I’d heard the news, and… I figured at least, you’d need a little pick-me-up, so I brought the oil for you.” 

“And you did my papers for me,” Lucretia whispers. “Maureen. You have your own things to work on, love.” 

“Your things are my things too,” Maureen murmurs. She pushes her face a little closer to Lucretia’s thigh, squeezing her tightly. “Besides, it’s better than dealing with all those busted doors. Some of those weren’t Lucas’.” 

Lucretia laughs and tucks her fingers against Maureen’s cheek, curling them slowly under her chin. “So you’re doing internal affairs papers instead.” 

“Yep.” 

“Because you don’t want to admit the relay on the doors are faulty.” 

“No… yes?” 

Lucretia shakes her head and taps Maureen gently with her knuckles. She shifts back against the pillows, and Maureen follows her up, crawling over her knees to the center of the bed. 

Lucretia shifts to the side, watching as Maureen kicks off her slacks and tosses them away to the floor. She unbuttons the top two buttons of her blouse and then lets herself flop onto the mattress. 

“C’mere, you should sleep some more,” Maureen says, stretching out her arm as she rolls onto her side, opening up her posture for Lucretia to slip against her. 

Lucretia slides against her, their legs tangling together as Maureen tucks her close, her hand creeping up to rub at the base of Lucretia’s neck. 

“Tomorrow we’ll try again,” Maureen promises. 

“Yeah,” Lucretia whispers, closing her eyes. Maureen kisses her forehead and Lucretia lays her head against Maureen’s shoulder, listening to the faint thump of her heart against her ear. 


	2. Something Special

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia wants to cheer up Maureen, but maybe asking Lucas wasn't the best idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia's robot-fail is based on [Datebot 1000](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ZZmLwH824).

Lucretia paces the small space of her room, chewing on her lip as she ponders their current predicament.

Raven’s Roost,half destroyed and abandoned; the thriving craftsman’s corridor reduced to crumbling stone and smoldering wood. No one in the path of the firebombs had survived.

Firebombs that they, no  _she_ was responsible for: Maureen had been coaxed into the shadow movement by Lucretia herself. She had only wanted to  _help_ ; they hadn’t intended for their fiddly little flash grenades to be reverse engineered into something more powerful, more destructive. They never knew that they were being set up, that there was a spy in the shadow ranks, that... Well, they didn’t ask for details on the how; they didn’t want them and could make an educated guess at it. Knowing doesn’t make things better. 

Maureen has been inconsolable ever since.

Not that Lucretia had been any better off at first. The news had brought her to her knees just as hard as it had struck Maureen; harder, even. She thought that through her meddling, however well-intentioned it was, had taken Magnus from this world, for good.

But it hadn’t. It might have taken half the town and, gods above and beyond, Magnus’ new family, but not him. It’s a disastrous thing, but the news of his survival had buoyed her mood, had given her something positive to latch onto to help her slog past the horror of what had become of their little invention.

It’s impossible to explain to Maureen, however. Maureen doesn’t know about Magnus, doesn’t know about her and her secret century and the things she’d given up to roam this plane in search of a key to the picturesque ending she’d always longed for.

All she knows is that they handed the very people they were trying to thwart the keys to an entire town’s ultimate destruction, that she’d been led into the very thing that she’d taken her family into hiding to prevent.

Lucretia has half a mind to go out and bring her Kalen’s head as a courting gift, just to soothe some of the ache. Parade it about, take it to Magnus too, wherever he is, some meaningless, nameless woman of vengeance with her claws wrapped into that man’s flesh.

Not that it would help anything at all; Maureen prefers to stay passive, dominate with her intelligence and wit. Devolving into violence to avenge violence isn’t the sort of thing that would make Maureen happy.

Instead, she tries smaller, more benign gestures. Gifts from town, small trinkets and new pens to go with paper Lucretia had made herself. Fresh cut flowers each morning and tea and drawings and soft kisses and gentle hands as she braids back Maureen’s hair at night.

None of her smiles reach her eyes. Maureen smiles most with her eyes, a gesture that crinkles up the edges of her eyes and her nose; it makes Lucretia ache to see the quirk to her lips even as her eyes remain the same. Sad, downcast, her brows drawn tight as she pales and the circles under her eyes darken. The flowers wilt and her tea is left undrunk.

She tries to invite her out to the gardens, out to the village, out to walk up to the top of the waterfall and the quarry proper to draw Maureen out of the cavernous compounds and into the sunlight. But Maureen won’t even go out into her precious gardens. It breaks her heart.

Lucretia sits with her in the lab and draws and helps with figures and covers Maureen’s hand with her own when Maureen stares off into space.

It’s hard, and Lucretia is at a loss for what to do. She’s been alive for so long, but she feels so hopeless. The things she would do to cheer up her old family aren’t working; the things that Maureen did for her when she was despondent after Wonderland aren’t working.

She’s struck with how shockingly little they know of each other, of their habits and the nature of their hearts in healing. Just under two years of knowing each other, and only three months of being lovers and Lucretia is at a loss entirely.

It calls for desperate measures.

She knocks on Lucas’ laboratory door.

It slides open without any prompting, Lucas scooting back from his bench to peer towards the door. His face falls from a hopeful curiosity to his normal grumpy grimace of tolerance. Lucretia knows it’s mostly an affectation based in embarrassment and Lucas’ general surly temperament, but it still stings because she knows he was hoping she was his mother.

What will she do if Lucas doesn’t know how to cheer Maureen up? What then?

Lucretia pinches her lips together and carefully starts to weave a path towards Lucas’ workbench. His workroom isn’t nearly as disgusting as his room, but she still has to dodge a wobbling tower of robotic limbs and step carefully over a puddle of oil that seems to be moving on it’s own, a slow magical hopping of droplets that react to the noise of her feet on the ground.

She focuses on Lucas, with his floppy hair and overlarge glasses and the pout that curls across his face as she leans forward to prod at a gelatinous glowing globe in a teacup.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I want to, I want to cheer Maureen up,” she says. “I mean, obviously she has a… I don’t expect her to be cheery after… that.”

Lucas looks up at her, his eye roll barely suppressed by a slow blink. Lucretia recognizes the look and knows that if she were in the room, Maureen would scold him for it. She’s not Maureen, though, and she has no interest in Lucas’ attitude problem.

“No shit,” he mutters. He sighs and rolls a screw between his fingers. “We were… we… Yeah, she’s upset.”

“I’m worried about her,” Lucretia admits.

Lucas looks back up at her and his mouth trembles slightly before he sets his jaw and scowls. “Yeah? Then cheer her up.”

The _please_ is unspoken. But she knows him well enough to know it’s there.

“I just don’t really know how,” Lucretia continues. “Everything is just sort of… it feels trite. In the face of what happened. So I…”

“It’s bad enough that you’re dating my mom or whatever,” Lucas complains, swinging around to face her fully. He taps his screwdriver against his leg as he bounces his knee. “Now you’re rubbing it in?”

“What? I’m not rubbing—your mother and I—oh god, _no_ that—” Lucretia stammers, covering her face with her hands as Lucas begins to shout over her. “That’s not, no! Hey! Stop! Stop yelling!”

Lucas points his screwdriver at her, his face flushed as he scowls. “Don’t ever say those words together in a sentence ever again, _ever_!”

“ _You_ said it first,” Lucretia mutters.

“ _Y_ _ou_ made it gross,” Lucas counters, his cheeks still splotchy. “That’s my _mom_.”

“Oh, I never realized,” Lucretia retorts.

They glare at each other in flustered silence for a few moments. Lucas finally snorts and gives a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Anyway, mom’ll… she’ll be all right,” he says with a shrug. He rubs his palms against his knees and shrugs again. “I… well, she was okay after dad died, I thought… but I don’t know. You do enough just by being around, you know,” he says.

Lucretia feels her face flush as he looks up at her, his brows furrowed as he frowns. It’s not the displeased, sarcastic one he normally wears. It’s pensive.

“Mom wasn’t happy before. It’s complicated. We thought we were but. You do enough just by… You’re here, and it’s not… it’s not like before.”

He sounds so young sometimes. It’s so easy to forget he’s just a teenager.

“Thank you, Lucas,” she says softly. She reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder.

He shrugs a little in reply; it’s not enough to shake her grasp so she squeezes it gently, like she’s seen Maureen do a thousand times.

Lucas stands suddenly and pushes his screwdriver into her hand. “I make her things,” he says.

“Little robots. Toys. They’re… they’re all pretty shitty,” he admits. “But she likes them. Here.”

He starts to rifle around on his bench, pulling supplies out from drawers and boxes. “Make her something like that? Since it’s not something you’ve tried. See how it works.”

“I don’t know the first thing about actual robotics, Lucas,” Lucretia protests, looking at the screwdriver. “I was thinking you tell me her favorite food and I make her dinner, not—not, oh man.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lucas says. “I can help out. We can make a dinner robot. Mom’ll love it.”

“Oh why not,” Lucretia mutters. “Worse thing that happens is it explodes.”

“Nah, I’ve moved on from explosions; it’s not my style anymore, too old for it,” Lucas mutters absently, pulling more supplies towards him. “Sit.”

* * *

“I made dinner,” Lucretia leads.

Maureen doesn’t look up from her work with the emerald mirror. “Okay, yeah.”

“Lucas went out for the evening,” she continues.

Maureen gives another small noise of assent. Lucretia sighs and gently lays her hand on Maureen’s back.

“Maureen, I made dinner just for us,” she says softly. “Not like. Dinner. I made _dinner_.”

“You make dinner all the time,” Maureen murmurs, then trails off as she catches up with the meaning. “Oh. Oh. Lucretia, dear… I don’t know if I’m… a date, really?”

“Really,” Lucretia says firmly. She reaches up and gently rights Maureen’s glasses, then tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “A date. I even made a cake?”

“Oh god,” Maureen says, “Is the kitchen sill there?”

Lucretia scowls and steps back. “Yes,” she mutters. “You burn one thing and you never let go.”

“I just don’t know how you burned pudding.”

Lucretia holds her hands out for Maureen. “Skill and talent,” she answers. “Now, come to dinner? I… there’s a surprise.”

Maureen raises an eyebrow and puts her hands in Lucretia’s. “More surprising than a cake?”

Lucretia bites her lip and nods. “You’ll see,” she promises, leading Maureen out of her laboratory to the kitchen where dinner and the contraption that she and Lucas rigged up that afternoon. “Um. Close your eyes.”

Maureen looks at her oddly, then closes her eyes and covers them with one hand. “I’m really a little skeptical here, babe,” she says. “You’re leading me into the charred remains of the kitchen, aren’t you.”

“ _No_ ,” Lucretia says firmly. “Kitchen is still one-hundred percent there.”

Maureen hums quietly, a single noise conveying the sort of playful skepticism Lucretia’s been missing most. Lucretia squeezes her hand tight and leads her to her chair, setting her in front of her plate.

“Don’t look,” she warns, rounding the table to sit down across from Maureen.

She chews her lip as she picks up the small start key that Lucas had given her, eyeing the conveyor system warily. She swallows hard and pushes the button.

“Okay, look,” she says.

Maureen uncovers her eyes and surveys the scene. The table is set nicely, with her food already plated-- a nice serving of roast chicken and vegetables with rosemary that smells wonderful. The kitchen is intact, and there’s a track laid out on the table between them.

Her eyes widen as the track whirs to life, dragging a wooden caddy with a bottle of wine towards her empty wine glass and…

“Oh gods,” Maureen says, a short laugh exploding from her mouth as one of the torches from the laboratory is pulled, completely lit, towards a candle.

The items stop moving—the flame billows and then the caddy whirs to life as it tips forward. It’s to pour the wine she realizes; the second she realizes it, wine comes spilling out from the bottle, across the table and her plate, spreading as the bottle continues to pour until finally, it reaches the glass. The wine glass fills, then spills over.

The wax on the candle starts to sputter, and then the track moves the two items slowly back to opposite ends of the table.

Wine drips into her lap and she looks across the table at Lucretia, mouth agape and totally speechless. Lucretia looks back at her in the same sort of wide-eyed bewildered wonder, and Maureen can’t take it.

She snickers once, twice, then bursts into laughter. Just when she thinks she’s done, she looks back at the set up, at Lucretia’s darkly flushed cheeks and rapid blinking, and the ever-growing wet patch on the table cloth and she loses it again, until her stomach aches and tears pour down her face as she struggles to breathe.

“Luce-Lucre—Lucas—he, didn’t he?” she gasps, pointing at the contraption.

Lucretia’s lips pull in as she sucks them against her teeth. “...he said it would work.”

“T-tech—technically it did,” Maureen giggles. Her laughter is interrupted by a sharp hiccup, which makes her laugh even harder.

Lucretia is silent for a moment longer before she puts her face in her hands and starts to sob.

Maureen is instantly sobered. She rises from her sodden chair and goes to crouch by Lucretia’s side. “Lucretia, what’s the mat—”

She hiccups so hard it jostles her glasses. She clears her throat and tries again. “What’s wrong? I’m sorry I laughed at you,” she says earnestly, putting a sticky hand on Lucretia’s knee.

Lucretia drops her hands and shakes her head. “No, no that’s what I wanted,” she whispers. She slides from her chair and throws her arms around Maureen, knocking her off balance.

“I wanted you to—I wanted this. Not the, not how bad that turned out, but I wanted to cheer you up,” she says, hugging Maureen tightly. She inhales sharply, a loud shuddery thing as Maureen’s arms loop around her waist.

“Oh,” Maureen murmurs. “I’m sorry I worried—”

She hiccups again, loud and Lucretia laughs against her neck.

“It’s all right,” Lucretia whispers. “I uh, your plate’s sort of ruined, sorry. I like wine with dinner and I get you can cook with wine, but uh… That didn’t turn out well.”

Maureen laughs again and kisses Lucretia’s forehead. “It turned out fabulously, thank you,” she whispers.

Lucretia grins and leans in to kiss Maureen softly. Maureen tries to follow her when she pulls away, but ends up bumping noses with her as she hiccups. Lucretia laughs loudly, gently pushing her away.

“C’mon, I’ll pour you a real glass of wine and we’ll eat off of my plate?”

“Deal,” Maureen says, smiling.

Lucretia’s heart soars as Maureen’s eyes scrunch up as she grins at her, hands sticky but warm in her own.


	3. Silvery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia's distracted by the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, want some really gay fluff 'cause.... that's all this is.

She fell in love with her in summer sunlight; married her in the depths of a wood lit green and gold. Maureen is like the flowers she tends to— bright, vibrant, and does best in the light.

But even so, Lucretia admires her the most just like this, at the depths of midnight, her profile illuminated by the blue-white glow of the full moon.

The “real-ass” moon, as they’ve started jokingly calling it as the moon-shaped facade of their new base starts to take shape in the clearing behind the original Miller laboratory.

Maureen with her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, made messy only by summer humidity and the strange hodgepodge of pens and charcoal and at least one screw. Moonlight bounces off the planes of her cheekbones, of her nose, tinting everything blue.

Lucretia finds herself watching with no other purpose than to just watch the way Maureen moves as she works. The way she ties the top of her coveralls around her waist as she kneels in the grass to unhinge a panel of spell-laced circuitry. The arch of her neck as she peers inside.

She thinks in undertones, and how to mix the perfect shade to capture the silvery green shine of the trees and the way that Maureen’s eyes seem to catch the light more readily than anything else.

Like this, Maureen almost seems fey—unbelievably untouchable, her face stern and her movements quick and fluid.

Despite knowing better, Lucretia always has a hard time reconciling _this_ Maureen with the woman who invents things so laughably and ridiculously bad that it’s become a point of amusement for the general public. She knows it’s a front, that Maureen uses that facade as a ruse to hide her more dangerous inventions, but Lucretia still stands in awe and wonder of the woman who is about to hang the moon for her.

“Shield your eyes,” Maureen calls as she slides the panel back into place. “I need the artist’s vision clear for this.”

She untucks a pair of dark lenses from her coveralls and Lucretia watches, entranced for the brief second it takes for Maureen to duck her head slightly and push them on.

If she happens to eye the way the shadows play across her clavicle and spill under the hem of her tank, well, no one else is watching them.  She licks her lips and grins, teeth catching on her lower lip as she turns her face away.

“Wouldn’t you be the artist?” she teases, slowly unfolding her own lenses from the breast pocket of her coveralls. “Since this is your vision?”

“Cute,” Maureen snorts. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Lucretia answers, adjusting her glasses. She watches as Maureen steps back from the wall of paneling, walking backwards.

“Okay, here we go,” Maureen murmurs, throwing the switch on her small trigger panel. They both turn their heads away as the paneling sparks to life.

The panels flicker on, and as they blink against the brightness, the clearing is filled with the same silvery-blue light as the full moon.

Maureen gasps. “Holy fucking Panites, it worked!”

Lucretia laughs and grabs Maureen’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “You didn’t think it would?”

“I mean, _of course it worked_ ,” Maureen scoffs. She bounces on her heels, swinging their linked fingers between them. “It’s just, the circuitry is so fiddly sometimes with the exact soldering and I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the quality of light correctly, or arranged the diodes in the correct way, not to mention we have to directly emulate some sort of phase system and I wasn’t sure if--”

Lucretia nudges Maureen with her shoulder, turning her body so she can catch Maureen’s cheek with her free hand. She kisses Maureen softly, cutting off some explanation of delayed timers and electroluminescence.

“ _I_ thought it would work,” Lucretia says smugly. Maureen’s cheeks color in the light and her smile softens to something shy as she ducks her head to nudge noses with Lucretia.

“That aside,” she whispers. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” Lucretia answers.

She’s not looking at the paneling or the light or anything else, just the way Maureen is backlit by the light of what will become their moon, dark hair washed light and her face in dark shadows, teeth bright as she grins.


	4. Soothe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a nightmare, Maureen knows how to soothe Lucretia's nerves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red wine cocoa is a real thing, and it's apparently tasty!

_“For testing purposes we will be using the following methods of above-ground suspension:_

_Low orbiting satellites must reach an altitude of at least 1,200 miles, with a period speed of at least 99 mi, lest they experience orbital decay and will lose altitude. Ideally, the satellite should take ninety minutes for orbit._

_The ∆v required for a successful satellite unit was determined by—”_

_Hands on her shoulders shake Lucretia from the report she’s perusing; one on each shoulder, too cold to be Maureen or Lucas._

_She turns, the grasp on her shoulders curling in until pain radiates from the contact. Red fire drips and curls up into her vision, white bone cutting through the fabric of her blouse._

_She cranes her neck back and looks into the fiery sockets that bore into her._

_“You stole from us,” they whisper. Two terrible, terrible voices, her family dead. “You never understood us.”_

_Lucretia swallows against the rising bile in her throat, her heart pounding uncomfortably in her chest. “I…”_

_The fire spreads across her vision and down her arms, engulfing her fully as they stare, sightless eyes burrowing as deep as her bones, as deep as each magically sharpened phalanges in her skin.  It sucks the words straight from her mouth, tongue dry and unmoving in her mouth, her throat burning and tight against their onslaught._

_They wouldn’t hurt her, they would never hurt her— but that was before she hurt them._

_“This is not for them,” they intone, and the fire spreads to Maureen’s logs. The paper curls and burns and crumbles. “This is not for them, they should not have this knowledge.”_

_“You, with, they,” Lucretia stammers, transfixed by the burning parchment and their eyeless gaze. “Without this we’ll fail…”_

_“Fail…? Fail,” they echo, again and again until their voices are no longer theirs, but something else entirely, just as terrifyingly familiar. The smoke curls in circles and then rises until a glowing skull looks back at her._

_“ **O**_ ** _hhh, that one’s tricky… That’s bad luck, dear! Something you wish to accomplish will surely fail… What a terrible fall from grace there, you were doing so well!_ ** _”_

_There’s a flash, then a spark and she cranes her head back up to the night sky, something large falling from the horizon, burning as it gains speed and she knows what it is, who it is, and she screams, and she keeps screaming as she’s grabbed again and shook, her eyes fixed on the flaming debris—_

“ _Lucretia_!”

There are hands on her shoulders and she jerks, slamming foreheads with the person shaking her.

“Ow!  _Shit_! Lucretia!”

Hands cup her cheeks and Lucretia belatedly realizes she’d been dreaming. She gasps and grabs ahold of Maureen’s arms— because it can only be Maureen who’s woken her, based on the gentleness of the touch on her cheeks.

She blinks up at Maureen, hiccuping back a sob as she tries to steady her breath. Her heart throbs in her chest and her lungs seem too small to draw in even a single breath.

“Lucretia,” Maureen repeats, leaning down to press her forehead to Lucretia’s. She lowers herself to her knees and braces her elbows against Lucretia’s thighs. “I need you to breathe with me, okay?”

Lucretia nods, mouth trembling as she struggles to suck in the first of several guided breaths that Maureen talks her through. Maureen strokes her cheek and tucks her knuckles underneath her chin and frowns as Lucretia still trembles and her breath hitches dangerously quick.

“I’m going to cast a spell, okay?” she soothes, rising on her knees to press their foreheads together once more. “Okay?”

“Not—not Sleep,” Lucretia begs, her voice hoarse and thready.

“I won’t,” Maureen promises. “It’s just Calm Emotion, to take the edge off.”

Lucretia nods, moving her head to press her nose to Maureen’s hair, hands coming up to curl into her wife’s hair and shirt. Maureen leans into the panicked embrace, one arm looping around Lucretia’s waist as the other traces the spell’s shape against her cheek, murmuring the words.

Lucretia sags into her and slides from the chair to the floor, pressing her body tight to Maureen’s. Maureen wobbles only slightly, having expected for Lucretia to press into her once the spell took hold.

“My dear, it was just a dream,” Maureen whispers, pressing Lucretia’s face to her neck. “Whatever it was, it’s not here, it’s not now.”

Lucretia just shakes her head slowly. “Maureen, I—I dreamed that the lab, it fell, you and Lucas were…”

“Oh, Luce, hon,” Maureen says, tightening her grasp around Lucretia’s waist. “That decidedly won’t happen.”

Lucretia’s mouth moves against her neck in a barely audible whisper of, “You don’t know that.”

Maureen runs her fingers up through the curls at the nape of Lucretia’s neck, gently scratching her nails against Lucretia’s skin.

“Well, I do, though,” she muses. “Luke and I have tested every variable we could think of, and then some. We’ve sent several satellites up to test and record conditions. The research you provided us was _phenomenal_.”

She winds a finger around one of Lucretia’s curls and leans back to look at her wife.

“I know some of what we do is a… a joke, but… Trust my work more,”  she whispers. “Be more secure in the work you’ve done with us, at least?”

“Mar,” Lucretia mumbles, feeling her panicked heartbeat stop and thud into something heavier, guilty. “It’s not… What _you’ve_ done is, it’s wonderful. It’s me, I-- I’m…”

“I checked your math,” Maureen teases softly. She cups Lucretia’s face between both hands, studying the way Lucretia’s mouth twists and her brows furrow. “Whatever nightmare you had was based on the fact that you fell asleep sitting up and reading horribly dry abstracts for our mages. Nothing to do with me or magic or your past.”

“It… it wasn’t the Hu… it wasn’t _that_ ,” Lucretia says, suppressing a shiver at the thought. “I… I’m just bound to hit a spot of bad luck and… that research wasn’t exactly mine to give away…”

“Spot of bad luck? Isn’t that just how it goes sometimes?” Maureen says lightly. She presses a kiss to Lucretia’s forehead, then to the tip of her nose, gently setting the gold-rimmed frames back onto Lucretia’s nose, tucking the chain back behind her ears like she likes them. “And if the people who it belonged to were scientists worth their salt, they’ll be excited to see what I did with it.”

Lucretia shakes her head slightly and sighs. “If you say so.”

“I do!” Maureen declares, then shifts on her legs, wincing at the pins and needles in her feet as she rises to her feet. “Now come, let’s get you a nightcap and get you into a proper bed.”

“No sleeping potions,” Lucretia protests, yanking her hands back from where she’d reached up to take Maureen’s hands. “No-- I don’t… I don’t wish to go back to sleep so soon.”

Maureen watches her for a moment, then shrugs and shakes her hands at her. “Okay. I’ll make you something _real_ nice. Been saving this for a better time, but I think it’s something you’ll enjoy.”

“What?”

“Just cocoa,” Maureen sings, gripping Lucretia’s fingers and balancing her weight as she stands.

“Oh god, Maureen, please, no more drink robots,” Lucretia groans. “I don’t think I can handle it.”

Maureen swings their hands out between them and then hugs Lucretia’s arm to her chest. “It’s not a robot,” she laughs, “Though what did I just say?”

“Oh, shit,” Lucretia swears. “I trust that you made a wonderful drink robot to pour cocoa… _places_.”

Maureen squeezes her arm and pouts as they make their way from their workroom to the kitchen. “It’s not a robot,” Maureen promises again. “It’s a _recipe.”_

“All lies,” Lucas says from his room as they pass. Despite the late hour, he’s still piled up to his ears in parts and wires, looking as wide awake and disheveled as always.

“Lucas!” Maureen gasps. She looks at Lucretia, “Betrayed by my wife _and_ my son.”

“Oh, Maureen, please show me the robot.”

“Not a robot,” Maureen sings. “I have made something great and you will _really_ like it!”

Lucretia laughs as Maureen continues to make her words into a song, letting her lead the way to the dark kitchen.

Maureen gives a flick of her wrists and the lights flicker on inside their spell containers, and she breaks away to start pulling pans down.

“Get the merlot from the cellar-space, will you dear?” Maureen asks, pulling mugs down from the cabinet.

“Are we mulling wine instead?” Lucretia asks, her nervous tension seeping away at the sound of Maureen puttering about, singing to herself as she readies a pot and the stove.

She retrieves the bottle of Merlot and side steps around the remnants of the rest of the team littered on the floor— boxes of Fantasy Luna bars, protein drinks, and fancy tea. She grins at the boxes of Fantasy Monster wedged behind the trash can by someone with more discerning tastes.

“Turn around!” Maureen says happily, then gestures expansively to the ingredients arranged on the counter.

“Cocoa? What’s the Merlot for?”

“The cocoa,” Maureen laughs, breaking hunks of chocolate into the warming pot. “Sit.”

Lucretia comes and puts a hand on the small of Maureen’s back. “No, I’m good.”

She reaches out and plucks a hunk of chocolate from the counter and leans into Maureen’s side.

“You’re in the way,” Maureen murmurs, sounding far from serious. She pours in cream and milk and stirs slowly.

“Am I?” Lucretia muses, sticking  her finger into the pan. She pops it into her mouth, grinning as Maureen swats her bottom in retaliation.

“Sit! Rascal.”

Lucretia chuckles and wraps her arm around Maureen’s waist, nestling obstinately against her side. Maureen curls an arm around her shoulders, humming to herself as she stirs the cocoa mixture, a small smile curling across her face.

The dream feels far away, even though the edges of worry nudge at her as she hands Maureen the bottle of wine, using magic to uncork it so they don’t have to untangle themselves. She’s afraid, like she often is, that if she lets go, Maureen will just cease to exist. That the moment Lucretia turns her back, the lab, their marriage, Lucas, the connections they’ve made will turn out to be a vivid fever dream, and she’ll go back to being alone.

It’s not a constant fear, but it’s something that Lucretia finds herself thinking of more and more each day. Certainly, this life feels like a dream, one she used to have a long, long time ago when words like _home_ and _marriage_ were things she thought she’d never get the chance to have.

Maureen humors her, keeps her close and leans her head against Lucretia’s, using magic to keep the pot stirring so she can turn and wrap both arms around her.

“It’s alright, you know,” Maureen whispers, rocking them back and forth slowly. “I promise you, this project will go fabulously. It’s just stress and overwork.”

“I know,” Lucretia murmurs. She thinks about the red robed skeletons, her family accusing her of every awful thing she did. “I… I should be doing _more_. I took so much, and here I am, taking more.”

“Nothing here is being taken,” Maureen says sternly. She reaches up and pinches Lucretia’s cheek gently. “I’m _giving_ to you.”

She pats Lucretia over the spot she pinched then turns, gesturing with her fingers to pour them two cups of cocoa with mage hand.

“We’re going to drink and cuddle,” Maureen declares.

Lucretia snickers, taking the mug from the counter. “Yes, _mom,_ ” she says, in a fair imitation of Lucas’ nasally drawl.

Maureen rolls her eyes and leans on the counter, cradling her own mug between her palms. “Drink up, then.”

Lucretia raises her mug in a mock toast, then gingerly sips. “Oh, this is good!”

“Isn’t it?” Maureen says. A grin stretches across her mouth. “I thought you’d like it!”

Lucretia takes another long sip, smiling against the rim of her mug. “Thank you,” she whispers softly. “I love you.”

Maureen’s smile eases and she reaches out and cups Lucretia’s cheek.

“You have a chocolate mustache,” she says fondly.

Lucretia promptly snorts into her drink, spraying chocolate everywhere, nightmare forgotten in the moment.


End file.
